"My name is Max. My world is fire… and blood."

For context, we note that as of today, 30 March, states like the Northern Territory are already in a grave crisis. Roads to Darwin are littered with trucks, that were taking food to these northern cities, but who ran out of fuel. The food now rots and drivers wonder how to save their trucks. YouTube has may videos of people in Alice Springs and Darwin going through near empty supermarkets, easily seen by typing into the search "empty supermarkets Darwin/Alice Springs."So, it is early days yet. Trump is destroying the oil infrastructure of Iran, so that they can't get weapons to attack Israel. Already 20 percent of the world's oil has gone. And if this drags on for months …years … like the Ukraine crisis, even after Trump is impeached and thrown in jail by the Democrats who are set to surge to power in the mid-terms? Here is my take, drawing on Mad Max:

In the old world — the one before the shortages — Australians thought distance was their shield. A vast island continent, blessed with sunshine, minerals, and beaches. We drove big utes, flew to Bali for holidays, and filled our tanks without a second thought. Fuel was cheap, plentiful, and someone else's problem.

That illusion lasted until the tankers stopped coming.

It began with tensions that had simmered for years. A wider war in the Middle East closed the Strait of Hormuz for weeks, months … China, facing its own energy crunch and prioritizing domestic needs, slapped export bans on refined fuels. Tankers rerouted or simply vanished from the routes that once fed Singapore, South Korea, and Malaysia — Australia's lifeline for 90% of its petrol, diesel, and jet fuel.

At first, the government reassured everyone. "We have reserves," they said. "No need to panic." But those reserves — barely 36 days of petrol, 32 days of diesel, and 29 days of jet fuel at normal consumption — evaporated faster than anyone admitted. Panic buying emptied regional stations within days. Then the real squeeze hit.

Week 1–2: The Calm Before the Empty

Queues snaked around servo forecourts from Perth to Cairns. Petrol hit $3, then $5, then became unavailable at any price for most. Essential services got priority: ambulances, police, freight trucks carrying food to cities. Private motorists were told to "stay home where possible." Airlines slashed flights. Supermarket shelves thinned as diesel-dependent supply chains stuttered.

The two remaining refineries in Geelong and Brisbane ran flat out, but they could only cover a fraction of national demand. Imports from the US arrived in small, expensive dribbles — nowhere near enough.

Week 3–4: The Fracture

Diesel ran critically low first. Farms couldn't harvest. Trucks couldn't deliver groceries or medicine. Cities like Sydney and Melbourne, built on just-in-time logistics, began to feel the pinch. Power stations that relied on diesel backups faced brownouts. Hospitals rationed fuel for generators.

Roads turned chaotic. With fuel scarce, only the connected or the ruthless could move. Black markets exploded — jerry cans traded for cash, gold, or favours. Regional towns, already isolated, became cut off when the big rigs stopped rolling. In the outback and rural areas, people fell back on whatever they had: old diesel tractors, generators, and hoarded drums.

Then the real breakdown started. No fuel meant no movement. No movement meant no food distribution at scale. No food at scale meant hunger in the suburbs that had never known it.

Month 2+: The Road Warrior Reality

Civilization didn't collapse overnight with explosions and gunfire; well, no gun fire like in the US; people had been disarmed and the Left in its dying moments said: "look, wasn't that a grand idea!" Civilisationfrayed, then disintegrated.

Communities splintered. Urban gangs formed around whatever fuel caches they could seize or defend — old service stations, abandoned tank farms, even siphoning from stranded vehicles. Farmers with tractors and stored diesel became local warlords, trading grain and meat for protection and fuel. Coastal areas with fishing fleets fared slightly better, but piracy on the water emerged as desperate groups targeted supply boats.

The big cities descended into a slow-motion Mad Max nightmare. Commuters abandoned cars on freeways that became ghost roads. Bicycle and foot traffic surged, but looting followed scarcity. Police and emergency services, stretched thin and fuel-starved themselves, pulled back to critical zones. The lucky ones with solar, rainwater tanks, vegetable gardens, and wood stoves — like those preppers on Kangaroo Island — hunkered down and defended what they had.

The vast Australian interior, once crossed effortlessly by road trains, reverted to what it always threatened to be: a harsh, empty expanse where only those with fuel, weapons, and knowledge could survive. "Without fuel they were nothing," as the old Road Warrior/Mad Max narrator warned. The blaze that engulfed the warrior tribes wasn't nuclear — it was the quiet death of logistics.

Supply chains for everything from medicine to toilet paper shattered. Inflation went parabolic. The economy, so dependent on exports of iron ore, coal, and LNG (ironically, we exported energy while importing the refined fuels we needed to function, the "logic" of globalism), ground toward a halt. Ports idled without fuel for cranes and trucks. Mines slowed as heavy machinery sat idle.

Government attempts at rationing — $40 fuel caps, priority lanes, even military escorts for tankers — came too late and too unevenly. Trust evaporated. Rumours of hoarding by the elite spread like wildfire. Some regions declared de facto local control; others slid into opportunistic chaos.

The Deeper Lesson

Australia had decades of warning. We once produced over 500,000 barrels of oil a day with eight refineries covering nearly all our needs. Policy choices, net-zero ideology, high costs, and complacency let it all erode. We became one of the most import-dependent developed nations for refined fuels, with strategic stocks far below the international 90-day standard. All because of the mania of globalism; from "lucky country," to "unlucky country."

In the worst case, a prolonged disruption — whether from Hormuz, a Taiwan crisis closing the South China Sea, or cascading export bans — didn't need a full apocalypse. It just needed the tankers to stop for 60–90 days.

The result? Not instant Mad Max with spiked cars and leather warriors (though some roads did see improvised armed convoys). Instead, a grinding, unequal unravelling: cities starving while remote preppers endured; essential services breaking down; the social contract fraying as "me and mine" replaced "us."

We discovered the hard way that modern civilisation is a thin veneer stretched over a vast, fuel-dependent machine. When the fuel runs dry, the machine stops — and the veneer tears.

Australia's precarious fuel supply wasn't just a policy failure. In the end, it was a civilisational one. Years of prosperity financed with debt and wishful thinking left us thoughtless and exposed. When the ships stopped coming, we learned what the old films had tried to warn us: without fuel, we were nothing.

And in the post-apocalyptic wastelands that followed, the strongest weren't necessarily the richest or the most "progressive." They were the ones who had prepared — the ones who understood that prudence, self-reliance, and energy security aren't optional in a dangerous world. Survivalists, preppers who had been ridiculed by sub-urbanites and inner-city Leftist elites for decades, were proven right.

The question now, is will Australians move to ensure that this bad situation does NOT devolve into the Mad Max world depicted above? We are looking to One Nation to take this fight on like never before. US commentators feel the same:

https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/australias-precarious-fuel-supply